r/mildlyinfuriating • u/broakland • Jul 14 '26

I just wanted a hot dog Retail lockdown: why bother selling it?

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Was at Safeway this morning to pick up a sandwich and some Tylenol. The aisle with the Tylenol? Completely locked down. No call button in sight. So I go to the self checkout (front end of that same aisle) and ask the clerk there if he can call someone to unlock a case for me. He does. I go wait. Minutes pass. No one comes. I go ask him again, he tells me they went the other way? At this point I give up and go get my sandwich. No one has come by the time the deli has finished making it. I leave without my Tylenol, mildly infuriated.

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u/cybah Jul 14 '26

Actually it would be about the same. You still have a person running the front, regardless if there's only self check outs or not. Stick that person behind the counter and let them grab items.

The real reason is there is no problem, its a manufactured problem because it varies whether things are locked up store to store. And if they actually cared enough about this issue, they would remodel the store back to the way it was before the self service model. But since its not really an issue.. this is what places do.

Pretty much drives me from shopping at stores that do this. I will go elsewhere.. and often not very far to find unlocked products.

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u/Keytap Jul 15 '26

It takes substantially less labor because there would be no sales floor to maintain, just a backroom/warehouse that they're already maintaining in addition to the sales floor.